The Farmers of Stormbrew have been homesteading forever, farming since 2020, and farming in Abingdon since 2022. They grow cut flowers, herbs, and vegetables. Daisy went to Virginia Tech for horticulture and spent years working on farms in VA and ME. Jenny has always participated in the homesteading lifestyle to some degree and is now just doing it on a larger scale. They started with cut flowers the year COVID shut the world down and have been a hybrid of veg/flowers/herbs since. They grow primarily for wholesale supply to other businesses like restaurants and stores. Any retail sales on the farm are generally flowers in the form of event/wedding flowers and their 23 week bouquet subscription and in 2022, they participated in the Abingdon Farmers Market – coming a long way from starting by selling seedlings out of the back of Daisy’s Subaru. Join us at Stormbrew farm to learn about various agritourism opportunities, no-till practices, and more!

Creative Seeds Farm is Certified Naturally Grown. They began by selling a wide variety of produce to one local farmers market eventually seeing a customer need for fresh greens (specifically lettuce) year round. They began focusing their production based on customer demand and removed tilling to improve their soil.

They focus strictly on providing their customers with lettuce and “salad fixings” year round. Creative Seeds previously sold a very large variety of produce during the summer months.

Join us at TNT Farm N Greenhouse for a class of Season Extension. Season extension provides early and late harvests, winter harvests, and longer harvest windows. These techniques also offer pest and disease control. These opportunities translate into more income.

TNT began in 2012 as a greenhouse and vegetable farm selling retail at three farmers markets, selling wholesale to Appalachian Harvest, and peddling to local restaurants. From 2012-2015 TNT was USDA GAP certified and from 2012-2020 was USDA Certified Organic. In its beginning years, TNT established itself at the Abingdon Farmers Market and with a couple restaurants. The 1 acre wholesale garden was eliminated in 2015. 2021 was a fallow year for TNT and in 2022, now focuses on edible garden transplants, perennial edibles, and mostly heirloom fresh vegetables selling at the Abingdon Farmers Market and restaurants. TNT is 4000 sq ft greenhouse, 3000 sq ft high tunnel tomatoes, and a quarter acre garden. Practices on TNT are still in tune with Nature and food safety although I have chosen to no longer carry the USDA Organic or GAP certifications.

Red Tail Grove is a 10-acre regenerative farm with a focus on multi-species intensive grazing and market gardening. They are entering year two of the business, and year three of farming. Grass-fed lamb, organic eggs, various veg, and some cut flowers. Their products are produced utilizing intensively managed grazing practices that produce high quality meat and eggs, while simultaneously improving the soil and pasture vegetation. Intensive Grazing also dramatically reduces overhead costs (permanent fencing, tractors, meds, feed, etc. all unnecessary), improves soil/plants over time (which leads to increased stocking rates), promotes pasture diversity (aesthetically attractive, good for native bird/insect species).

They sell their products direct to consumer, to businesses/restaurants, and will be at the Abingdon Farmer’s Market in 2023 with greatly expanded veg/flower production going into the Spring. Additionally, Red Trail Grove will have egg producing hens the entire year (started them as chicks last spring), and should actually have lamb in a couple months (which will provide their first animals to sale).

Join us at Appalachian Harvest for a class on Aggregation and Distribution services and more. Founded in 2000, Appalachian Harvest is ASD’s rural food and herb hub. Our team works with small to medium-scale local farmers, helping them get their produce and medicinal herbs to market. We provide training, assist with organic certifications, and much-needed, year-round technical support. Our team also secures retail orders from various wholesale markets and provides processing, aggregation and distribution services to get products to these markets!

Integrating operations is key to incremental success in farming.  Farms aren’t about single product lines, but about how you can design your operations to support each other and build your assets (and soils) for the long haul.  Shift away from extractive farming methods and focus on long term success.  At Kelly Ridge, Justen will discuss their experience (both successes and failures) with building synergy in farm operations.  Topics under discussion will include livestock (pigs, sheep, horses, chickens), alternative feeds, composting, pasture maintenance, kid rearing, specialty crops (such as hops), integrated processing services, fertigation, and more.

Debbie Mott grew up on a ranch in Arizona. She and her husband had a horse ranch in Coeur d’Alene Idaho and now have a farm in Southwest Virginia. At The Old Virginia Farm & FunGirl Farms, they are growing hay and mushrooms as well as raising bees, horses & German Shepherds. During this class, we will learn about maintaining healthy hives, the tools required for the trade, and how to get started with your hives. Debbie states “No matter what you think you know about bees, they will show you something different.”

Visit Tumbling Creek Cider Company’s expanding orchards to learn about cider apple varieties, propagation, planting, maintenance and how to re-establish the apple industry in our region. We’ll tour the Old Orchard where we are rejuvenating 50 year-old trees and have planted many 3 year-old trees, the New Orchard as a high-density trellised system and the tree nursery.  The tour will end at the cider barn to sample some of our hard cider.